AnneH's blog

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-thorson1005.artoct05,0,777555.column?coll=hc-headlines-oped

Yipyip

I liked the yip-yip little telephone alien things.  Their wiggly little antennae made me happy.

prehistoric squid in yarn form

Mike found these online somehow.  I'm not sure i want to know how.  I dug up the pattern and knitted up a few.  Honestly, I don't know why.  I couldn't help myself.  They are just too silly and too cute and too irony-free.

http://www.knitty.com/issuespring06/PATTnautie.html

One sad day, Marshmallow was struck by a car.  Some people brought her into my vet to get her fixed up, then took off into the night.  They were never heard from again.

The vet discovered that she had been involved in at least one other trauma.  Her leg had been broken and healed on its own - incorrectly mind you, but healed nonetheless.  Unfortunately, the more recent accident had destroyed it.  So she lost her back leg.

She's at my house now.  She gets along with Maynard - the other 3 legged dog.  She has been careful not to tangle with the cat.  She's a little shy, but who can blame her.

She is absolutely beautiful.  She is one of the most gorgeous dogs I have ever seen in my life.  She is all white with some very light cream markings on her back and ears.  She has black eye-liner.  Fluffy tail.  Little paws.

If anyone knows anyone who would love this little husky girl, please let me know.

Over the weekend, we pulled the rest of the carpet out of the house.  I would recommend never ever placing carpet in a house.  It is simply disgusting.  Imagine for a moment 9 years of dander, dust, mites, and mite carcasses building up under your carpet.  "But I vacuum!" you say.  That's nice, but no vacuum in the world is a match for the mechanics of grinding fine particles into carpet.  Seriously.  I vacuum too. 

So all this crap was freed from the carpet and puffed into my house. 

Then we got another foster dog.  She is a BEA-U-ti-ful white husky mix - with 3 legs of course.  She puffed more fur and dander into my house in 48 hours than you can imagine.

Today I am an alergic mess.  Despite the sinus steroids, my eyes are literally sticking out of my head a little.  I can't breathe.  The stuff I took to fix that turned my brain into slime.

So today I am at home.  I probably shouldn't drive.  If i did manage to get into the office, I would just sit there and drool.

I haven't met anyone famous. That is actually strange because my brother used to work for David Fincher (of Fight Club fame) and for Quinten Tarantino. My husband-to-be knows all kinds of people in the music industry.

Having met no famous people is actually fine with me.  I have this pathalogical distain for people who enjoy, benefit from, or encourage hero worship.  I think they are the lowest of the low.  I realize that is irrational, which is why I freely use the term "pathological" to describe it.

I think the closest to someone famous would be either Princess Ann Claire of random reality show fame (who is actually a very lovely woman) or

OH HEY!

I met the man who wrote the definitive anatomy of the rat brain. His name is Larry. He is famous because he is one of the 100 most quoted scientists in the world. He was a very nice guy. He allowed my friend (she works in his lab) and I to host a party at his house. Just like that. He actually offered his house for the taking.  Then his wife helped buy food for us.  Fantastic family.

At Trader Joe's last night, I had a conversation with this 3 year old on the benefits of honey in plastic teddy bear jars.  It was her opinion, and I fully concur, that honey from teddy bear jars is better than honey from regular glass jars.  She told me like 60 times that it's true.  I mean, of course it is.  Duh.  A priori and all that.

Then she joined her mom into the conversation with "That kid thinks so TOO!  That kid likes bears too!"

She called me a kid.

I'm probably older than her mom, and she called me a kid.

How cool is that?

Well, it was a slow day at the office...

I had heard that all calico cats were female.  I had assumed this was kind of an old wives tale - much like kissing toads and getting warts or the keeping birthday wishes secret.  But I asked my lovely and brilliant friend Annie D, who is an expert in all things feline.  She said, "Yes, that's why i suggested you stop calling your stray calico cat Mr Splotchy."

Apparently, the position of the coloring and the coloring in cats is contained on the X chromosome.  So in certain situations, conflicting color instructions will battle it out and win randomly all over a fetal kitten.  Of course, the colors and patterns in cat fur is much more complicated than that.  There are degrees of albinism, different striping patterns, common patches that have had the coloring knocked out - like tuxedo cats or cats with socks.  And many other things, like the texture of the fur and how each individual hair is colored - solid or striped.

Occasionally, you'll get male-ish calico cats.  They are "male-ish" because they either have an extra set of chromosomes: XXY, or because they are genetically like 2 cats.  That happens when an embryonic kitten is absorbed by another kitten in the womb.  Neither state is automatically deadly in cats (or in people), but the resultant individual is usually sterile.

So now you know...

Many thinks to Wikipedia for schooling me in cat design.

Driving back from Chicago with my then boyfriend (now bethrothed).

We were driving a converted Chevy Astro van. It was converted by a company who branded it "The Gladiator", so "The Gladiator" is all over it. It smells funny. The inside is very blue, like 0099cc blue for all you nerds out there. And very plush and very squishy. It looks like someone hunted down a herd of stuffed canival animals that you would normally win in the ring toss and turned their pelts into the inside of The Gladiator.

Anyhoo, it broke down outside of Joplin, Missouri. Close to this Precious Moments Theme Park. That is frightening on many different levels.  It was somewhat repaired by a very Christian mechanic.

Then in Oklahoma, we discovered that the mechanic in Missouri had neglected to reconnect some of the wires and hoses. AND he left lots of tools in the engine.  Apparently the Christian mechanic had his mind on loftier things.

Then the dashboard had a cute little electrical fire in Texas.

Then the A/C went out in New Mexico.

Then we made it home.

I wish i could say that there is some book that had awakened some amazing yet dormant part of my psyche. I can't. Probably because I - like most people - tend to most readily ingest the ideas that I already agree with. So it would be easier to say "At X point in my life, Book A really resonated with me."

However, my first cook book was the Treasury of Health Cooking. It's way out of print because it's not very good. But I did make most of the recipes.

It was instrumental in teaching me that one can use more than two ingredients and a microwave. Now, I can use 6 ingredients, two sauce pans, and a spatula. Hooray!